


Glancing

by theappleppielifestyle



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-10 02:31:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Young Avengers run for their lives once or twice, camp out in the woods for a while to avoid getting brutally murdered, and participate in the battle of Hogwarts. All of this, along with some risk-taking, daring rescues, appearances from the world-famous Aurors AKA Avengers, and two certain wizards falling in love.</p><p>Or, the obligatory Hogwarts!AU where they spend a year on the run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In this fic, Billy and Eli are in Gryffindor, Teddy and Cassie are in Hufflepuff, Kate and Tommy are in Slytherin.

Even in the thick of it, when he can’t hear anything over the deafening thunder of blood through his ears, when he can’t feel but he can see the scrapes along his palms, his knees, all bloodied and pricking with gravel, when everything dies down to a blur of screamed spells and slices of red barely missing them, Billy can’t stop thinking about his parents.

‘In hiding’ always sounded like something far off, something that reminded Billy of reading Anne Frank in fifth grade under the bleachers before getting his Hogwarts letter and entering a world where people didn’t know what you were talking about if you said her name. It sounded like nuclear wars and rebellions and everything Billy learned about in history class before all of this happened, caring about it in that kind of distant way you care about things when you know they’re never going to happen to you.

And then things started disintegrating, slowly at first, and then dissolving into one giant ball of condensed shit in the span of six months, muggles and wizards alike being killed in the name of this goddamn war that was supposed to be over before Billy was even born.

Voldemort wasn’t exactly a household name in the Kaplan family, but over the past year Billy has been on the receiving end of more scars than he usually gets in a year at Hogwarts, which is saying something. And then things kept escalating, and one day Billy sent an owl home to his parents with a few short words, scrawled hastily with a bent feather: _Uprising. Go into hiding. Love you. Will be there when I can._

He still feels guilty about that, even though he made sure to write _when I can_ instead of _soon_ , because he knows more than any person in his family that he’s not going to see his family anytime soon, let alone for the Christmas holidays, which was what he had been hoping.

What was he supposed to tell them? How the hell could Billy have possibly explained in the short window of time he had that the muggle borns were being rounded up, that Billy was going to get bound and shut away for being what he can’t help? He’s running, and he’s having flashbacks to Anne Frank and videos he had watched out of boredom, and he's wondering through the blaze of adrenaline if he’s going to get a concentration camp or if they’ll just put him out of sight.

And now he’s running, one hand clenched around his wand, yelling charms over his shoulder, and he’s outnumbered and outgunned, he knows, and charms are next to useless against killing curses- _killing_ _curses_ , he’s still reeling from that, from the fact that he’s running for his life from students he’s known for six years, people he’s passed in the halls, and they’re all just _kids_.

But even though he’s a kid, even though the people screaming spells that Billy has only heard about in old books and whispers in bedtime stories the dorms late at night, even though he’s tripped over a root twice and he’s picturing himself in the handcuffs he saw that one time when he snuck into the Restricted section and Kessler laughs his way through the next shout of _Avada Kedavra_.

It hits the tree next to Billy’s head, and Billy looks at it long enough as he runs past to see a circle of rot around where it struck. Shit. _Shit_.

Eli is yelling something, but Billy doesn’t really hear him until he’s right next to him, slamming a hand against his shoulder and hollering in his ear as they sprint.

Billy is feeling lightheaded now, but whether it’s from the adrenaline or the extensive running or from the nearly dying a dozen times before midday, he’s not sure. He pants, “What,” and when he catches sight of Eli’s exasperated expression, like they’re out on the Quidditch field and Billy is being useless as always, he has to force down a laugh.

“You-” Eli gasps a breath, yells a curse over his shoulder, hitting one of the guys in the gut. Eli yells, _fuck you, you fucking death eater sons of bitches_ , before turning back to Billy, still running, still breathing so hard he feels like he’s going to pass out soon.

“You know how to Disapparate, right?”

“Yeah,” Billy pants. “I- yeah, I can, I passed my test.”

His throat is raw, he needs to sit down and be force-fed pumpkin juice like they always used to do to him after a game when he was too tired to sit up, even though he wasn’t even on the team, and then they’d all laugh and drag him back to the castle and Billy would always forget the trick step and his foot would sink in and in and in and-

A blast of red bursts somewhere over the top of his head, bringing him back. He shakes his head, blinking the sweat from his eyes. “You want me to Apprate us out of here?”

“Would be nice,” Eli yells, because Eli yells all the time, even when they’re not facing imminent death like they are now.

Billy would kill for a glass of something right now. Not even pumpkin juice, just plain old water, and now he’s thinking about killing for something when he shouldn’t be thinking about killing _at all_ , he’s not that guy, he’s the one being chased and even _then_ he wouldn’t-

He grabs Eli’s wrist, clammy just like his is, squeezes his eyes shut while running and concentrates, shoves himself out of his own head, focuses hard on somewhere, _anywhere_ but here, and there’s a shocked noise from beside him.

The usual feeling of displacement that goes hand in hand with Disapparating curls in Billy’s stomach, his innards twist and his skin shudders somewhere it shouldn’t and then he’s being quickly shoved back together just as fast and then they’re both stumbling.

Billy’s eyes fly open, and he hits the forest ground with a dull _oomph_ as the air thuds from his lungs. Eli springs right back up, wand at the ready, but Billy lies there for a second, his hair in a mess over his forehead, sticking to his eyelashes, staring up at the tops of the trees and revelling in the lack of death threats being hurled in their direction.

Eli swears, pants for a while and then swears again. “Nice.”

Billy wheezes, “Thanks,” and takes Eli’s hand when it’s offered to him, letting himself be hauled up to his feet.

 

 

They walk around for a while, still feeling like Death Eaters are going to leap out at them at any second, and even Eli is looking kind of at ease when there’s a rustling in the bushes a few meters to their right.

Billy tenses, his hand going to his wand, and Eli, being Eli, has his wand is up again due to never having put it away. “SHOW YOURSELF OR I’LL BLAST YOU SO HARD YOUR CHILDREN WILL FEEL IT.”

The bush stays silent, and after a few seconds Billy nudges Eli’s ankle with his foot. “It’s probably a rabbit, or something.”

Eli scoffs. “Yeah, a rabbit. Sure. Say that when a freaking Death Eater pops out and-”

The bush rustles again, more prominently this time, before a voice calls out, “Not a Death Eater, I promise,” and Eli starts yelling again and the guy who just came out of the bushes starts yelling, his wand safely in his pocket and his hands up, and the girl next to him is yelling over him, wand out and ready, and Billy shoves his way in front of all of them and screams, “ELI CALM DOWN JESUS CHRIST IT’S TEDDY AND KATE DON’T SHOOT THEM BREATHE MAN CALM.”

And then there’s silence again, more weighted this time, breathing hard again and leaning so the leaves crack under their feet.

“Uh,” Billy says. “Hey, guys.”

Both Kate and Teddy say, “Hey,” with the air of people who have recently got into some very deep shit, and Billy suspects he sounds just like them.

 

 

It takes Eli a few minutes of pointless interrogation and Kate snapping at him half a dozen times until Billy finds himself being led back to their camp. It’s not long, maybe another ten minutes of walking, but Billy is getting increasingly more exhausted and he’s still in shock of being in way too many perilous situations and he hasn’t even had breakfast yet, and now he has Kate Bishop and Teddy freaking Altman winding their way through the trees towards a tent which they’ve been hiding in for the past few months, because that’s the only option they had if they didn’t want to die horribly.

How the everloving fuck did this become Billy’s life? He wants to go home, grab his parents and even his annoying little brothers and sister and hug the shit out of them until his arms fall off. And then he wants to go to bed and stay there forever, where nothing tries to make an attempt at his life.

But he can’t, and he had just avoided death at the hands of Kessler and fucking Greg, and everyone always joked about those two becoming Death Eaters, but they’d never- Billy had never thought they’d _actually_ -

He and Eli weren’t even the first ones, he knows. Kessler and Greg had blood on their hands, metaphorical along with very literal blood, before they had started chasing them down.

“Welcome to casa de Bishop,” Kate says, jolting Billy out of his thoughts, and he has to blink a couple of times before the tent solidifies in front of him.

“It’s bigger on the inside,” Teddy assures him, with a tired sort of smile, and Billy just. Just can’t _handle_ that right now, he can’t handle Teddy FUCKING Altman making a Doctor Who reference like he’s trying to make Billy feel better. Like, _what_.

But because he’s Billy, he mutters something on default about bowties being cool, and catches the tail end of Teddy’s surprised, nearly gleeful look, and has a second to be knocked on his ass by that before Kate is tugging him forwards by his elbow.

“Cassie’s here, too,” she says, and Billy goes blink, blink, blink, before he remembers Cassie, the tiny, blonde Hufflepuff one year below him who he helped out with Transfiguration homework that one time and is almost never away from Kate’s side.

Kate shows them around their new digs- the tent is huge, big enough to fit at least another five people, and Billy remembers how Kate had always gotten expensive presents in the mail for her birthday, how she always had coins to spare if anyone ran dry at The Three Broomsticks.

Kate is a Slytherin, and doesn’t apologize for it. She’s one of the people in her House who hang out with people from varied houses, walks across the lines like it doesn’t matter, flips people off if they ask her why a pureblood Slytherin is sitting with the Hufflepuffs, or the Gryffindors, or the Ravenclaws. She’s sat at every table, talks to anyone who she thinks is cool, and Billy has looked up to her ever since she smiled at him after walking to the Slytherin table after taking off the Sorting Hat.

Billy helps with the defensive spells when Kate starts putting them up around the camp, and the slow, methodical wave of his wand, the familiar spells he’s chanting, are almost as good as a lullaby.

 

 

He doesn’t go to sleep, because he can’t. Instead he stays up, sits with the others, and Cassie is the one who sets the fire, muttering the spell twice before getting it right. The twigs ignite, and Kate lets out a tired whoop as she reaches for a can of mystery meat.

She laughs at Billy’s wrinkled nose. “I know, it’s awful, but we didn’t exactly have time to stop for takeout.” With that, she spoons a heap of whatever the hell it is onto Billy’s plate.

Eli hasn’t stopped giving her looks since she appeared out of the bushes. “You’re that Bishop chick.”

“I am.”

“What the hell are you doing out here? I thought your family was pureblood.”

“Yeah, so what,” Kate says. “So are you. You think we’re all just going to jump on the Voldemort boat and become Death Eaters? Teddy’s half blood, they would’ve snatched him up and turned us into their ranks. We both fought back, dipshit. Looks like you did, too.”

Eli raises one hand unconsciously to the black, shiny bruise over one eye. “Guess I did,” he admits slowly, like he’s still checking her over. If there’s one thing Eli doesn’t do, Billy’s learned, it’s trust people off the bat.

Billy, however, is a giant puppy. If people aren’t blatantly trying to hurt him, he’s fine. Which is really sad, but he’s trying not to think about it, like he’s trying not to think about where his family is, trying not to think about the boy sitting across from him eating awful food and being gorgeous.

Leave it to Billy to accidentally hide out indefinitely with the guy he’s been pathetically in love with for his entire Hogwarts experience.

God. He still remembers back to when he was eleven, a lifetime ago, when he had spotted a blonde, kind of nervous looking boy on the other side of the boat that was taking them across the lake. He remembers, scarily vivid, how Teddy had met his eyes.

 _Hi_ , Billy had mouthed, young enough not to recognize the twisting feeling in his stomach to be the feeling his dad had described when he had first seen his mom, the feeling everyone was describing on television, the feeling, at the time, he thought he was supposed to feel for girls.

After a pause, Teddy had mouthed back, _hi_ , like he didn’t think Billy was even talking to him, his mouth turning into a shy smile that had made eleven-year-old Billy’s twisting stomach fold over into knots.

“I’m Billy,” Billy had whispered, because a Professor was talking and they weren’t supposed to talk over teachers at school, so he supposed he wasn’t allowed to talk over Professors at this school, even though it was a wizard school, where everything was different.

“I’m Teddy,” Teddy had whispered back, and Billy was gone, baby, gone.

Six years of school, a minimum of two steady classes together each year, a total of maybe three interactions at most after that initial sort-of-conversation, and Billy was still head over heels over him.

And now they’re both battered and unwashed and eating cold meat with dented forks, and Billy thinks that he wouldn’t mind the taste so much if he was licking it out of Teddy’s mouth.

He beats that thought down- he had come to terms with being gay long ago, by at least third year, where it had been a big deal to everyone who cared- and skewers a piece of meat, which he’s stopped trying to figure out the identity of, and chews with his mouth closed.

He’s in the middle of a war. It’s not even his own war, but he’s in it, and they all know they’re going to be part of the resistance at some point, whether that day is months, years or god forbid decades away. They don’t have time for high school romance.

From next to him, Eli grunts. “There’s no way she’s travelling with us. She’s high-profile, she’ll get us caught.”

Billy watches the two of them- it’s been like this for a few minutes, like no-one else is there and they’re having their own argument separate of all of them, and watches as Kate’s eyes go steely.

“Do you know how long I’ve been on the run with these guys? Like, four _months_. There hasn’t been a missing persons report, no-one is looking for me. My dad doesn’t care.” She says it matter-of-factly, which raises Billy’s eyebrows, going over all the gifts she had received over the years at the breakfast table.

Eli’s expression flickers at that, but not to anything good. “Well, sor _ry_ , princess-”

“If anything, I’m the one that’s going to get us caught,” Billy interrupts, hardly aware of saying it until it’s out in the open. Then everyone’s staring, so he supposes he better continue. “I, uh, might have blasted some Ministry Officials in the face. I mean, I totally did. They started it, though.”

As to be expected, Eli laughs, a great whooping one, along with Kate, and even Teddy and Cassie crack a smile.

“Je _sus_ ,” Kate grins. “Tell me you got my dad. Please. Even just a kick to the balls, _please_ tell me you-”

“I didn’t kick anyone in the balls, but I think I got myself on a watch list anyway,” Billy says into his food, suddenly ravenous. God, when was the last time he ate?

Eli says, “Dude, you didn’t tell me that,” and Billy shrugs.

“There wasn’t time, what with you charging in and yanking me out of bed into being chased by Death Eaters.”

Teddy says, “Wait, you did _what_ ,” and he’s smiling, his face lighting up with it, and Billy is eleven again, Teddy’s face lit up by the lanterns hanging down over the boats, leading the way to the castle for their very first step inside of Hogwarts, Teddy’s eyes positively dancing in it.

Billy tells himself the sudden lack of breath is from all the running he did earlier.

 

 

Apparently being on the run is less death-defying and more waiting around, or at least that’s what Kate says before she points her wand at the dying fire and makes it blaze into life again.

They talk until it starts to get dark, lying around on the blankets with sticks poking into their backs, leaves in their hair whenever they stand. Billy’s not even sure what they’re on about at this point, maybe the constellations or the bastardization of books into movies or what a dick their Potions teacher was- _was_ being the definitive word here, because he died late last year, caught in the lines between Death Eaters and students.

That sends them all quiet again, like they have to be reminded over and over, constantly, that this isn’t a campout, or a school trip, and if they’re found by the wrong people they will die just like so many others have.

Cassie asks Billy if he was there, and Billy has to say _what_ before he remembers about their Potions teacher.

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah, I was there. I saw.”

He saw, along with a few others who had stayed in for detention, including Kate. It had been the first glimpse of the war for Billy, the first real glimpse of something that until then had occurred only in the newspapers and in hushed, worried discussions in the hallways.

That was less than six months ago, when Billy had a home to go to and homework to do, and now he’s lying with an itchy blanket in between him and the forest floor, looking skywards as dried blood flecks off his skin into his clothes, around a circle of people who, apart from Eli, are near strangers to him.

It’s then that Billy realizes that they’re all lying with one empty hand and the other clenched around their wands.

 

 

The next few weeks are quiet, which is a welcome change to what Billy’s life has become over the past few months. They build fires, huddle around the radio, eat shitty food. They set up protective spells once at morning and once at night, the spells knitting over each other in a way that reminds Billy of being back home, of his mom sitting on the couch and muttering to herself about _pearl one, stitch one._

He keeps in touch with Tommy like he has done for the past few months: on the other end of a mirror, and there’s always that moment where Billy holds his breath before Tommy’s face appears, same as always.

Billy’s the most abnormal one out of all of them right now, he thinks. The only purely muggle raised one, who didn’t know what the hell Hogwarts was when the letter slipped through the slot in his door. His dad had thought it was a prank, and had thrown it out, but then after two weeks and owls practically assaulting the house, they had started to get the hint.

Billy stays an appropriate distance away from Teddy at all times, only touching him when it’s necessary, and even then he shies away as fast as humanly possible. His body beats at him, _war zone, war zone, we don’t have time for this and he wouldn’t want you anyway_ , and thinks about how cringingly awkward it would be if he actually did something about his feelings and Teddy turned him down, leaving them to live in frustratingly close proximity for the next god-knows-how-long.

But the thing is, it doesn’t feel like a war zone. It doesn’t, at least most of the time, except when they move the tent once every few days, just in case. Except when they tune into the emergency station to listen in and see if they recognize any of the names. Except when it gets to them, really gets to them, and at the end of the first week Billy walks in on Cassie bent over at the knees, hyperventilating into her hands.

She chokes out in between sobs that they have her dad, that she knows there’s barely any chance he’s still alive, that she nearly loses it every time they switch on to that channel on the radio and the static dies down. Billy holds her, strokes her hair like he did when his little sister had her first breakup, and his shirt gets damp just like last time.

They’re not soldiers or anything, they’re not trained or even graduated, but they hold down the fort and keep moving, but most of the time it just feels- well, not normal, there’s always that underlayer of tension, but after a while that turns into their classification of normal.

Living on a knife edge turns into normal, and even though Billy still gets minor panic attacks over how completely _wrong_ this all is, over how fucked up it is that they’re running from people who want to kill them over nothing, he manages. Kate wakes him up as she passes and they go outside, do the spells, and then go check to see if they have enough rations for a good breakfast.

They’re coping. Sort of.


	2. Chapter 2

The sun is high in the sky, there are pebbles pressing between his toes along with the muddy water, and Billy realizes that he has no idea what month it is anymore. This is met with him standing knee-deep in the lakewater, at a loss on what to do with himself, before turning his head over his shoulder. “Hey, Kate!”

“Yeah?”

“What month is it?”

There’s a pause before Kate says, “I don’t _know_ ,” sort of annoyed, like, _how the hell am I supposed to know, why are you asking me_?

He looks over at Teddy. “Ted!”

Teddy looks up from where he’s been trying to skip stones unsuccessfully for the past hour and a half. Hey, they don’t exactly have anything else to do. “Yeah?”

“What month is it?”

Teddy frowns. “Uhhhh.”

It’s been close to a month now, and Billy’s mostly gotten over this pesky avoid-any-kind-of-intimacy-with-Teddy-at-all-costs, which means they’ve started talking. Sort of. More than they used to, at least, which to be fair was about once every two years, when they were forced to.

Billy waves him off. “It’s fine, I’ve kind of been getting that reaction.” He stops talking, but his gaze is catching on how Teddy’s hand arches as he tries and fails to skim the rock across the surface of the lake.

He watches for a few more feeble attempts until he’s caught in the act, blaming the hard blush on the sun that hasn’t let up for a while now.

“I could help,” Billy hears himself say, more than he feels it. “With the rock skipping, I mean. You’re sort of failing epically.” _Smooth, Kaplan. Really smooth_.

 _Shut up_ , Billy tells his inner dialogue, and looks up again when he hears the sloshing of water. Teddy is wading through the lake towards him, rolling up his pants as he does, until they’re clinging to his thighs. His massive, bulging thighs, which are now slick and shiny with water.

Billy doesn’t even bother being angry with himself when he starts imagining other things that Teddy’s thighs could be slick and shiny with. Sweet _Merlin_.

Teddy sidles up to him, smile still kind of awkward, because it’s not like they talk much when they aren’t in a group. “Thanks. I guess. Even with the insult.”

“Which wasn’t mean to be insulting,” Billy says. “Really, it was just an observation. Of the observing. Kind. Of observation. Uh.”

There’s a pause. “Okay,” Teddy says, and Billy’s brain helpfully supplies that Teddy probably thinks the sun has gotten to him and he is now completely bonkers. Awesome.

“Right,” Billy says, his voice embarrassingly high as he bends to scrape a rock from the bottom of the lake. He can feel his shirt riding up a bit, and wouldn’t be surprised if even that short burst of sun is enough to get sunburned. He’ll be peeling this mess off of him for weeks. Guh.

He brings his arm back, the familiar motion of it making him smile, and arcs his arm sideways. The rock skates across the surface of the lake, bounces once, twice, three times before sinking.

Billy shrugs. “Not my best, but I’m out of practice.”

When he looks at Teddy, his breath leaves him in a rush. Teddy’s looking at him, slightly downwards because he’s about half an inch taller, and _god_ , Billy remembers that growth spurt at the beginning of fourth year, so when Billy came back from the summer he was met by post-pubescent Teddy Altman, to whom ladies (and Billy) swooned and people walked into walls from.

Billy also remembers biting the pillow to keep himself silent while jacking off to the thought of Teddy’s new body for nearly every night for the first six months, which still didn’t muffle the noises he made. Eli had glared at him every time they walked into the Great Hall for breakfast.

Teddy says, “Better than mine, anyway,” and Billy has to wait a few seconds for that to sink in and for him to remember, oh, right, lake, stones, skipping etc.

“Yep,” Billy croaks, damning his teenage hormones and their tendency to act up at the worst times, i.e. when the subject of your eternal affections is standing less than an inch away and staring at you for some reason that Billy can’t figure out. “Okay. Uh. You want a go?”

He bends again, and feels a flash of sun on the paler parts of his back. He comes back up with a good rock, flat and very skipabble. Which isn’t a word. Teddy’s even screwing with his internal dictionary, the infernal, perfect bastard.

He holds it out to Teddy, who takes it, and Billy damns teenage hormones and damns his entire adolescence because their hands brush and Billy honest to god shivers a little.

Teddy starts to hold his arm back, and Billy remembers his aunt batting him on the top of the head and correcting him. He doesn’t bat Teddy on the head, mostly because he doesn’t know how either of them would react if he did, and instead takes Teddy’s wrist without thinking about it.

Once it’s done, it’s done, and he’s holding Teddy’s wrist in a totally platonic way and definitely isn’t freaking out over it. “Okay,” he says, and hopes Teddy doesn’t know it’s to calm himself down. “You just bring your arm back like this,” he says, pulling Teddy’s arm back into an approximation of what it’s supposed to be like, and Teddy’s arm moves willingly against his.

“And then let it go, like-” Billy more or less throws it for him, squeezing down on his wrist when Teddy has to let go.

The rock skims the lake four times before going down.

 

 

 

After that, Billy finds himself with his hands full of Teddy more and more often. Not literally, sadly, but Teddy keeps coming up to him, asking if Billy could teach him the protective spells or if Billy wants the last piece of mystery meat or even just to talk. They’re out in the woods with no-one else to talk to but each other, Billy guesses- if not him then Teddy would go to the others.

That’s how they end up talking over the enchanted fire, one of them flicking their wands once in a while when the flames start to fade, and talking about their chocolate frog card collections at home.

“Mine was extensive,” Billy says, his fingers pushed together to pillow his head. Their elbows are brushing, and Billy is freakishly fixated on the warmth that seems to be radiating out of Teddy. “Like, _extensive_. I’m talking full-on collectors item shit.”

“I had all of the Avengers.”

“ _Everyone_ had all of the Avengers. My sister had all of the Avengers, and she doesn’t even collect them, just shoves them in the space above her bed when she can’t be bothered getting up to put them in the bin.”

He notices how they’re talking in past tense already, and wonders again just how long Teddy’s been out here. Longer than him, almost as long as Kate, but he hasn’t been able to get any exact dates.

“Who’s your favourite?”

Billy tilts his head up at him. They’re lying on their backs, layers of blankets underneath them so the rocks don’t hurt too badly. “Avenger?”

“Yeah.”

Billy shrugs. “I don’t know. They’re, like. The best auroras known to wizardkind, how can you pick a favourite?”

There’s a shorter silence than there should be before Teddy says, “Mine’s Cap,” and Billy lets his breath go.

“Oh my god, _right_? He’s so hot.”

The silence after that is considerably longer, and Billy fights the urge to facepalm. That was basically how he came out to Eli, what the hell-

Teddy draws a loud breath. “I prefer Tony,” he says, and it’s sort of fast, in the ripping-off-a-bandaid way. “For the hotness- thing. He’s beautiful.”

Billy would be perfectly happy lying there for the rest of the night in stunned silence, but apparently his motormouth isn’t. “Cap’s not beautiful?”

“No, he is,” Teddy says. Again, quickly. “Just- I don’t know. Something about Tony’s eyes.”

Billy has absolutely no idea what to say to that other than, “Yeah,” and their elbows are still touching, and Billy doesn’t know what to do about that, either, and his mind keeps blaring, _warzone, warzone_ , even though there’s nothing around to fight and hasn’t been for a while.

 

 

Which, of course, is when everything turns to shit.

Billy walks into the tent three days later, his hand around the wedge of glass that he should be able to see Tommy in, but can’t.

“Something happened to Tommy,” he blurts, right in the middle of dinner, and the conversation stops.

Kate’s up on her feet by the time the words register. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.” Billy has a second to realize just how dumb that sentence sounds right now before he’s powering on. “He didn’t answer, he _always_ answers, and it’s been over an hour and he’s still not there.”

“Maybe he just went out?”

“No, we said we’d keep it on us at all times, and we always check in at six. He hasn’t missed a checkpoint in months, not once. He wouldn’t start now.”

He sees the look get traded along the line: they had forgotten, or nearly, just what situation they were in. They had gotten too used to eating out of cans, sleeping in pull-out beds. They woke up every morning, re-did the spells, and didn’t put too much thought into why they were setting them in the first place.

 _Warzone_ , the voice in Billy whispers, and this time he welcomes it.

They’re still students, on the lam or not, but they can’t put on anything that they can easily trip over. None of them wear the robes anymore.

 

 

Eli doesn’t react well when he’s told to stay at the camp with Cassie. Billy lets him rant for a while before he calmly, rationally explains why this is a strategic plan and manages not to slap Eli around the ears while he does it. It’s really a test to their friendship, given how long they’ve known each other, that Billy has never given into that particular urge.

Eli yells, WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU THINK MY ANGER WOULD GET THE BETTER OF ME, and Billy doesn’t even dignify that with an answer. Instead, he nods his goodbye to Cassie, grips Teddy and Kate on a shoulder each and closes his eyes.

Tommy Shepherd had been a surprise, to say the least. He had showed up in their third year, a Slytherin who got kicked out of another school, and the first time Billy met him had been the first time he had breached the wizard subject of ‘normal.’

Everyone had whispered, turned away from Billy in the halls, nudged each other when one of them walked past, and why _wouldn’t_ they, because Tommy Shepherd had been, and still is, almost identical to Billy Kaplan, down to everything but their hair and how they act.

Then one day, someone had asked, offhand, where Tommy was, and Billy had replied, _over at the Quidditch pitch_ , which had surprised him, because a) he hadn’t spoken two words to the guy at that point, and b) he didn’t actually know where Tommy was. Except he had. Except he _hadn’t_.

And it had kept going like that, the inexplicable knowledge of each other’s favourite foods, where they’re going to go, and always, always, where they are right this second.

Billy breathes in, reaching out with not-fingers to Tommy through miles and miles of empty air. He comes away bloody.

 

 

They Apparate in the middle of a large ballroom, and Billy hears Teddy muffle a swear as they land awkwardly, stumbling forwards onto their knees.

“Sorry,” Billy says, standing up and waiting for the others to do the same. “Guess I need to work on it.”

Kate says, “Yeah, yeah, we forgive you, wh-”

“HEY!”

They freeze- or, well, Billy does, but only for a second and then Teddy and Kate are moving against him, wands already at the ready.

Billy only catches a flash of the guy’s face before he charges, firing a curse that Teddy dodges and shoves Billy out of the way of, and then Kate marches up and _punches the guy in the face_ , which makes everyone sort of stop just because of the shock value.

John Kessler hits the ground, confused and bleeding profusely out of his nose.

Billy says, “What,” and he thinks he might be laughing, because they’re _wizards_ and Kate’s wand is literally _in her hand_ and now she’s kicking him, stomping on his wand hand so he yells and lets go of it, and then rearing her foot back and sinking it into his stomach, once, twice, three times.

“Kate,” Teddy snaps. “Kate!” He pulls her back by her shoulder. “What the _hell_!”

Kate glares, kicks Kessler in the stomach again just to hear his groan flinch into a yell. Then she stands on his hand so he can’t reach his wand. “ _Fine_ , just stun him.”

Teddy gives her a look before pointing his wand at a scrabbling Kessler. “Stupefy.”

Watching Kessler go limp, his nose cracking again on the wooden floor as his face impacts, is one of the most satisfying things Billy has ever seen.

Kate shifts off of his hand before her foot comes up again and she breaks Kessler’s wand in one clean _crunch_. “Okay. Glad I got some closure at last. Where to, Billy?”

“Uh,” Billy says. He isn’t liking what happens whenever he reaches towards Tommy- it’s a muddle of _nononono_ and _don’t_ and _please_ and someone who isn’t Tommy, laughing with a grate to the edge of it, and every time Billy tries to get a specific location, Tommy shoves at him.

 _I’m trying to help_ , Billy tells him, but he doesn’t think Tommy can hear him over the scrape of metal.

“Uh,” Billy says again, less steady this time. He swallows. “I think he’s a couple of floors up.”

“You _think_?”

“It’s not-” Billy is frowning, can feel his eyebrows meeting in the middle, “He’s not- he’s in trouble, guys, they’re hurting him really badly, I think he’s-”

He cuts himself off with a choked noise at the back of his throat, his knees nearly giving way underneath him as he’s strangled with it, swamped by the sensations of Tommy Shepherd, who is screaming and twisting onto his side and it takes all Billy has in him not to do the same.

When he comes back to himself, his legs are sagging, and Teddy has his hands under his armpits, holding him up. He’s saying his name, trying to meet his eyes, and Billy gasps, “I’m fine, I’m okay, it’s fine,” a few times before the hands slide out and Billy can stand on his own again.

“Right,” Billy says, when almost all remnants of the fingers biting into his thigh are gone. “Okay. He’s, uh. A few floor up, and the room has- this big ass door handle on-”

Kate says, “Or you could just show us,” and pushes him at the base of his spine to get him moving.

None of them are very careful about stepping over Kessler.

 

 

It’s harder than it should be, finding Tommy, since every time Billy tries to get a pinpointed location leading him somewhere, it just about takes him over. On the fifth stumble, Teddy rights him again and hisses, for the fifth time, “ _Stop_ it, you’ll know where it is when you see the door handle.”

Billy slurs something about there being a lot of door handles, and he’s still sort of overwhelmed and he can feel the phantom fingernails pressing up his thigh, making him thrash. And then there’s a lot of yelling, or at least more than usual, and Teddy’s hand tightens around his shoulders and that’s _nice_ , warm and soft and weirdly comforting, so Billy focuses on that instead of the ugly screaming that he’s not sure is in his head or not.

Speaking of his head, the ground is heading rapidly towards it.

 

 

Billy wakes up to Kate snapping his fingers next to his eyes, which is how every day starts now. He mutters at her to give him five minutes, he’ll get up and follow the rest of the defensive spells when she’s halfway through with them, but instead of letting him sleep in, she shakes him. Hard. Repeatedly.

“Ow,” Billy says. “ _Ow_ , Kate, stop it, I’m getting up, I’m getting-”

He stops, blinking hard as his eyes adjust and the darkness moulds into shapes around him. They’re not in the tent-

It comes back to him in a muddle of things he’d rather not remember: Tommy and the lack of his face in the mirror. Tommy screaming in his mind, hard enough to make Billy wince. Kessler, and Kate digging her fists into him. Flashes of spells that Billy used to read about in History of Magic, but never imagined they’d ever be aimed at him.

Right.

Rescue mission.

Which, by the looks of things, isn't going very well.

Billy looks around. Not in the tent, indeed. Instead, they’re surrounded by what looks like a basement. “Shit.”

“Shit,” Kate agrees, her ass hitting the concrete with a dull thump next to his head.


End file.
